U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,391 (which is hereby incorporated by reference) describes in detail a harness-making machine having a connector installing station or zone for installing a connector on a cable, a staging area which holds a stack of connectors, and a cable feeding or dispensing unit adjacent to the staging zone. The harness is produced by advancing cable from an endless source, such as a reel, through the dispensing unit, past the stack of connectors, and to the leading connector of the stack. The leading connector is installed on the cable and the leading connector is then moved along a rectilinear path away from the installing station drawing with it a portion of the cable. The second connector of the stack is then moved to the installing station and installed on the cable. These operations are repeated until all of the connectors have been installed on the cable. The cable is cut by a severing device in the dispensing unit and the harness is removed from the machine.
The connectors are of the type having a cable receiving surface or face and having terminals extending normally from the cable receiving face. The terminals have wire receiving slots so that the installation process merely requires that the cable be pressed down towards and against the cable receiving face. The conductors in the cable will enter the slots of the terminals and thereby be electrically connected to the terminals.
Harness-making machines of the type described above are being widely used and, while recent machines have been substantially improved by the addition of controls for producing the harnesses without human intervention and improved means for feeding the cable and controlling the movement of the connectors away from the installing station, the latest machines incorporate the essential features of the machine described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,391.
Under some circumstances, problems have been encountered with cable-making machines of the type described above in that difficulty is experienced when the cable is advanced through the dispensing unit past the connectors in the stack. The cable must move past the ends of the individual terminals of the connectors and it has been observed that under some circumstances, the ends of these terminals engage the cable while it is being fed and impede its movement through the stack of connectors. In other words, under some circumstances, the machine becomes jammed and the intervention of a human operator is required to correct the problems encountered. The present invention is directed to the achievement of a cable guide for guiding the cable from the cable dispensing unit to the leading connector of the stack of connectors in the staging zone and preventing any interference with the movement of the cable by the terminals in the connectors which are in the staging zone.